


So Long As We Get Somewhere

by mammothluv



Category: Batwoman (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:34:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21821521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mammothluv/pseuds/mammothluv
Summary: Kate, Alice, and all their contradictions.
Relationships: Kate Kane & Alice
Comments: 12
Kudos: 69
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	So Long As We Get Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alchemise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemise/gifts).



> Written for alchemise for Yuletide 2019. Thanks for giving me a chance to write these two. I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Section heads and Alice's quotes that are in italics are from _Alice in Wonderland._

**"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."**

Hope shoots through Kate’s body. Beth. Beth was there. She had to be.

Kate can remember the day their parents gave them necklaces. Two halves of a whole. Always fit together just like her and Beth. The brilliant red garnet somehow depicting both Beth’s fiery personality and the passionate determination burning just under Kate’s surface.

It was their sixth birthday. Seven years before Beth was ripped from her, back when all they knew was the two of them together.

Kate unwrapped her box slowly. Beth tore through the wrapping revealing her necklace long before Kate was done.

Once she had hers unwrapped, Kate brushed Beth’s hair aside and fastened the chain around Beth’s neck, making sure the necklace sat just right.

“Turn around!” Beth insisted, eagerly grabbing the other necklace from Kate’s hand and undoing the clasp.

When they both had them on, their mother motioned for them to sit together and pose for a picture as their father aimed the camera. They reached forward, showing how their necklaces fit together like pieces of a puzzle.

Kate’s necklace still hangs around her neck. She runs her fingers over the edges now, familiar. Comforting.

She thinks of Beth’s… Alice’s stone. In a knife now. No longer offering comfort to her sister but protection maybe. Power.

Still, Kate can feel the energy between the two stones, connecting them. Always two instead of one. She’d pushed this feeling deep down for years but now, hope simmering inside her it bubbles again to the surface - what it means to be one half of a whole.

**"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!"**

Kate wakes from a dream. Her hands pounding on the door, the one she knows now Beth was behind all along. She pounds until her hands bleed but the door doesn’t budge.

She wakes with her heart racing and breath coming fast.

“Shhh,” she hears in her ear as a hand lightly brushes her hair back from her face, now covered in cold sweat. There’s a feeling of comfort and safety in the split second before she recognizes the voice as Alice’s. Her sister is curled against Kate’s back, one hand around Kate’s abdomen and the other continuing to stroke her hair.

Beth used to do this sometimes when they were kids if Kate had a nightmare. Back before either of them knew nightmares could invade their waking hours, Beth would crawl into Kate’s bed, wrap her body around Kate like a protective barrier against the monsters in Kate’s dreams. Their mom used to joke that they shouldn’t have bothered buying separate beds given how often she’d find the twins cuddled together when she came in in the morning to wake them.

Now Kate feels a stab of fear at Alice’s nearness. But she doesn’t move. As long as it’s been, Beth’s body curled around her, her fingers running through a hair in a gesture that used to mean only comfort, still feels right, natural, like home.

“What are you doing?” Kate asks, voice coming out shakier than intended.

Alice’s responding laughter is enough to make Kate tense, bracing for the impact of words or blade.

“Don’t worry, sis. I’m just here for a visit.” Alice’s voice has an edge, almost taunting. She likes having this power over Kate.

 _“The proper order of things is often a mystery to me,”_ Alice says.

“What do you mean?” Kate asks.

“I see you’ve been reading my book,” Alice says. And Kate senses Alice’s eyes on the copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on the nightstand. “What I mean, Kate. Is that you used to be my sister and now you’re not. I used to Beth and now I’m Alice. But now or then? Which is it? Who’s to say?”

“I’m sorry, Alice,” Kate whispers. It’s not enough, nothing is. 

“No, you don’t get to do that!” Suddenly Alice’s grip around Kate’s waist is too tight. Her fingers dig into Kate’s ribcage.

Kate takes a deep breath and, eventually, Alice’s grip on her loosens.

“I’d rather you be angry at me than feel nothing,” Kate says.

Alice’s grip on her loosens slightly. _“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”_

“I don’t know, Alice. I don’t think either of us knows that.”

 _“I’m stranger. You’re stranger. Together, we are… strangers.”_ Alice says. Kate recognizes the words from the book on her nightstand, the one she’s been reading every night, trying to fit her sister and this woman who calls herself Alice together like a puzzle with half the pieces lost.

And then Alice’s fingers loosen their grip on Kate and Kate feels her slipping away. She wants to reach for her sister but she holds herself still, willing herself to do nothing to upset this strange balancing act between them and the people they used to be.

The bedroom door slides open and Alice slips out. Kate doesn’t sleep but she doesn’t move from her bed for a long time, the spot where Alice had lay is still warm to the touch. Kate traces the spot with her fingers, imagining she can feel the outline of Alice still.

Kate does drift off to sleep at some point because she wakes with the alarm blaring and Vesper Fairchild’s voice coming through the radio. She slams her hand on the “off” button and groans. She feels her sore body tense as Alice’s visit comes rushing back to her. Part of her wonders if she dreamt it but Alice’s body against hers felt too real to be anything but the truth.

She wills herself out of bed and two cups of coffee later she makes it to Wayne Enterprise and Luke. She feels a little bad about it but her fingers crossed that Luke will have news of bank robberies or some other crime spree not perpetrated by someone Kate is related to.

He doesn’t. She’s frowning at him now.

“Are you disappointed in a low crime day in Gotham?” he asks.

“A little,” she admits. “I just could use a distraction.”

“Most people go golfing or something. You know, relax.”

“Do I look like I golf to you, Luke?”

“A movie then?”

Kate lets out a low growl and paces the length of the room.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Luke says, punctuating the comment with a sigh.

There’s a gym in the Batcave. (Kate hates calling it the Batcave but Luke has said it to her often enough now that it sticks.)

Kate punches the speed bag, does pull-ups until her body is drenched in sweat and her arms ache. Then she gets on the treadmill, turning it up as far as it will go.

She tries to outrun the feeling of Beth curled around her, Alice’s voice coming from her mouth speaking in riddles.

****

**_“Somehow you strayed and lost your way, and now there’ll be no time to play, no time for joy, no time for friends – not even time to make amends.”_ **

After the gala, after Katherine. Kate’s dreams no longer have the cloudy haze of hope surrounding them. Kate dreams of her hands around Alice’s neck. If Alice lives on revenge, maybe Kate can too. They were two halves of a whole in a different life after all.

But even in her dreams, Kate never finishes the job. Just like when she had Alice’s throat between her hands at the Gala -- Katherine dying and Mary breaking in a room not too far away -- her hands go limp. Seconds later her eyes fly open.

Alice is never there when she wakes up.

She doesn’t let herself feel sad about that. When she does cry the tears are for Mary or for Beth, two motherless girls she wishes she could comfort, wishes she could have saved from their pain.

She never gets there in time. Not when it counts.

Alice isn’t Beth. Kate knows that now. She wills the knowledge to flow through her veins like poison, washing out any trace of hope or sympathy that may be living on in spite of her best efforts.

**_“How do you run from what is inside your head?”_ **

Kate texts Mary a few times a week. Mary never answers.

Kate went from two sisters within her grasp to none.

She hunts for Alice. She no longer wants reconciliation. She’s after a reckoning.

She fans the flames of anger boiling in her blood. Does her best to stoke it into hatred. She’s almost there when she stops the Wonderland Gang’s van. She revels in the feel of jaws cracking under her fists, then one of Alice’s goons struggling to breathe under the weight of Kate’s boot. 

And then, the Harbinger comes and the crisis. They almost lose everything.

But they don’t.

And there’s a picture in Kate’s pocket now, the picture Kara gave her. Kate and Beth on another Earth. They look about the age Kate and Alice are now. They look happy, light in a way Kate doesn’t remember feeling since before the accident on the bridge. Never torn apart. Always two halves of a whole. That other Kate and Beth smile back at her and Kate doesn’t know how to hold on to her anger in the face of what could have been.

They didn’t have to be ruined.

Rather than look into Beth’s eyes, her soft gentle smile, her arms around that other Kate’s shoulder, Kate throws herself into her training full force during the day and missions at night. When Luke eyes her with concern she ignores it.

And he lets it go because soon there’s a run of prominent judges dying with holes in their head. Not gunshots but something sharp cutting straight through skin, bone, and brain. Precise, brutal.

Kate loses herself in the thrill of the hunt. Being Kate Kane feels impossible these days but Batwoman has a purpose.

That purpose eventually finds her in an alley with a woman who calls herself Stag.

The adrenaline rush is one of the few things that feels good anymore. This moment before Batwoman pounces when the villain feels like they’ve gotten away with it. Then Kate is swinging through the air, from the fire escape to the ground right in front of Stag in one graceful arc.

Kate gets in the first blow, the element of surprise working in her favor.

But Stag is strong and her next attack sends Kate slamming into the building behind her.

She comes back with a kick that has Stag losing her footing. She advances, ready to keep the other woman down. That’s when she feels it. Searing pain. Luke’s voice in her ear “Kate. What happened?” But the world is swimming and she doesn’t have a chance to answer before it all goes black.

Kate awakes somewhere dark. She can’t see much so all that’s left to focus on is the pain.

It’s everywhere.

She tries to raise a hand to her head and that’s when she realizes she’s tied down.

What she can see is grey. A blur, occasionally gaining and then losing definition.

She groans.

“Take it easy, sis,” says a voice that sounds too far away to be in the same room but unmistakably belongs to Alice.

“Alice, what did you…” Kate begins, her voice coming out rougher than she expected.

 _“Little Kate fell down the hole, bumped her head, and bruised her soul,”_ Alice chants in a singsong voice.

Kate wills herself to make her surroundings come into focus.

“Well, you did bump your head at any rate,” Alice continues. “The hole, I’m afraid is in you.” Alice is looking in the direction of Kate’s stomach where the pain is most intense. Kate tries to look down but her range of motion is limited by the ties that hold her to the table. She can tell her suit is gone. She’s clothed in what appears to be a thin white robe.

She feels a shudder run through her whole body.

“Are you cold?” Alice asks sprinting away and then skipping back with blanket in hand. “There there little sis, the bad woman hurt you but I’ve got the potions to make you you again.”

“You’re only three minutes older,” Kate mutters, so grateful for the warmth now surrounding her that she forgets herself for a second and floats back to her and Beth’s old childhood argument.

“Three and a half minutes,” Alice corrects, following Beth’s script perfectly and then pausing, a small frown on her face as she regards Kate.

“You can’t keep me here,” Kate tries. “If I’m as injured as I think, I need proper medical care.”

“What?” asks Beth. “Do you want to see your other sister?” she taunts, raising her fingers to form air quotes around the word sister. “At her sad little secret clinic? Oh, did you think I didn’t know about that?”

Kate tries to swallow back the fear rising in her throat at the thought of Alice knowing even more about Mary.

“Don’t worry. I’m not fond of her but Mary is on the no-kill list now, I assure you.”

“You killed Katherine.” Kate says.

“Katherine was a monster. Quite irredeemable,” Alice says as she dabs at Kate’s wound with something that, from the sting, Kate is guessing is alcohol. 

“She was a person,” Kate corrects. “I hated what she did. But she was a person.” 

“I’m a person. You don’t seem to have any trouble hating me,” Alice responds, looking up at Kate with a thoughtful frown. 

“I don’t hate you, Alice,” Kate says, and she feels the truth of it in her bones. She isn’t capable of it, even though she wishes to god she was. 

“You do. You hate me because I’m here and Beth is gone,” Alice says, lift a finger to mime a tear sliding down her cheek.

“I could help you. We don’t have to be… this,” Kate says, nodding her head between the two of them to indicate the predicament they’re in now. “Something happened. I traveled to another Earth. One where you… where we never got separated. It seemed like we were happy. At least for a while. Maybe we could be that way here.”

“Oh, dear. You’re becoming a bit of a broken record. Though the alternate universe is a new twist. Down the rabbit hole you went,” Alice remarks with a giggle. “But we’re on this Earth now. And here, you’ve never been able to help me, Kate. I learned that a long time ago when I heard you on the other side of that door. On the other side of my cage. And then I heard your footsteps walk away.”

“I hate myself for that,” Kate says. “Every day. You don’t know how much.”

Something softens in Alice, only for a second, but enough for Kate to know it’s possible.

“Sometimes… just sometimes and don’t tell anyone,” Alice laughs. “Who would you tell?” she asks, spinning around, arms outstretched. “We’re the only ones here! Sometimes I wish I could be her for you. Just for a minute. “But _it’s no use now, to pretend to be two people! Why there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!”_

“No no, dear sister,” Alice says. Reaching down to trail a finger along Kate’s cheek. In spite of herself, Kate leans into the touch. “Katherine hurt us both. Don’t you see? She muddied the waters. It’s why she had to go.”

Kate feels tears sliding down her cheeks, warm and salty, and then the rough texture of Alice’s fingers against her cheek wiping the tears away.

Kate doesn’t know if anyone will wonder where she is. No one but Luke for a while. Luke would have heard the fight, tracked her injury on the Batsuit. But surely Alice knew enough to get rid of our disable his ability to track her.

She bites back a groan. Luke is going to be insufferable if he has to make her a new suit.

She should probably worry about not dying of infection first.

“Deep breath, sis,” Alice commands. And then she’s sticking Kate with a needle and the world fades to black again.

Kate wakes up in her own bed, covers pulled tight around her shoulders. She panics at first, hands reaching frantically but the covers give way easily and she realizes her arms are free.

She props herself up on her elbows, wincing at the strain on her wound. She raises the hem of the plain white shirt she assumes Alice dressed her in and finds the wound is neatly covered in gauze. Kate doesn’t see any blood soaking through which she takes as a good sign.

Kate scans mentally down her body. Aside from feeling a bit groggy and the now dulled pain in her abdomen, she doesn’t notice much other than the usual lingering aches and pains. She raises a hand to her forehead. No fever. Also good.

She reaches toward her nightstand for the bottle of extra strength aspirin she always keeps in the drawer. That’s when she spots the china teacup, white poppies against a dark grey background resting on a black saucer with a red-trimmed edge. There’s a small tag attached to the handle of the cup, reading in script “drink me.” On the saucer sit two small white pills.

Kate shakes her head and reaches past Alice’s offering into the drawer for her own bottle of aspirin. She shakes a few into her hand and swallows them dry. When she’s ready, she gets out of bed and carries the cup and saucer into the kitchen, carefully pouring the liquid inside, a strong herbal smelling concoction, and the pills Alice left down the drain and running the garbage disposal.

Then she washes out the cup and saucer, hesitates for a moment and places them gently on the shelf above her sink. She unhooks the tag and tucks it underneath the saucer where no one else will see and know it’s from Alice.

She shoots off a quick text to Luke assuring him she’s not dead and then she crawls back into bed and grabs her copy of _Alice in Wonderland_ from the nightstand, opening it to the page she’d bookmarked two nights ago.

“Everything’s got a moral,” she reads. “If only you can find it.”


End file.
